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Zen Energy aims for tenfold lift in customer sales, largely through solar and battery storage, and commits to net zero Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions by end of 2023.

The post Zen Energy shoots for ten fold leap in market share with focus on solar and battery storage appeared first on RenewEconomy.

The European Parliament passed a resolution on Thursday urging member states to raise the EU's 2030 emissions reduction target and disburse more money to developing countries starting this year. 

Voluntary emissions reduction (VER) prices slid lower Thursday, extending a sell off this week, as a combination of the increasingly gloomy macro-economic picture combined with wider concerns over the integrity of the market.

Royal Entomological Society to sponsor garden in effort to show importance of less glamorous creepy-crawlies

Stag beetles and hornets will be among the stars of Chelsea flower show next year as horticulturalists encourage people to welcome invertebrates into the garden.

Bumblebees and butterflies tend to get a lot of press, but in a 2023 garden sponsored by the Royal Entomological Society, less glamorous creepy-crawlies will take centre stage.

Don’t use pesticides. Massey says: “It’s about creating balance. Ladybirds eat aphids, for example, both are valuable in their own right, but it’s about being patient – if you get aphids causing a problem, don’t panic and spray them but know a ladybird will come soon and gobble them up. Create a garden that is attractive to all kinds of life.”

Embrace mess. “We don’t need to tidy everything up to the maximum degree … there has to be some kind of movement towards a looser, I suppose more patient style of gardening. Leave some leaves on the floor, don’t tidy everything up,” Massey says.

Welcome weeds. “Dandelions, for example, are a good source for insects and are actually a really attractive flower. Yes, they can sow seed everywhere but you can allow them to spread around and it creates less work for us and it’s very beneficial for wildlife at the same time.”

Accept and enjoy garden life. “Slugs and snails have been demonised but they are actually really important in breakdown of material and a food source for other types of animals that are more desirable, like frogs or toads. Be a bit more accepting of new sorts of life forms and maybe if you look at them closer, and you know more about them through things like science, they become more interesting and more fascinating and more appealing.”

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The preliminary result of a public call issued by the Brazilian state of Tocantins will see a major commodities trading firm progress to negotiate with the government over the sale of 200 million tonnes of jurisdictional forest carbon credits, according to a Thursday release.

It’s not enough to shock. Protesters need to win as many people over as possible – and it’s not clear they succeeded

Last week two activists from Just Stop Oil who threw tomato soup on a landscape painting by Vincent Van Gogh in the National Gallery and then glued themselves to the wall, symbolizing, um, well, ah… I’m really not quite sure.

The head-scratching disconnect between the activists’ tactics and the message they were trying to convey – linking oil to the climate crisis, in case you hadn’t figured it out – has been widely discussed, and ridiculed, in the media.

Stephen Duncombe, a lifelong activist, is professor of media and culture at New York University and co-founder of the Center for Artistic Activism, a non-profit organization that trains artists and activists around the world be become more affective and effective. His forthcoming book Æffect is on assessing the impact of arts and activism.

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Elms – seen by some as one of few promising Brexit dividends – has been put under review

Three hundred and 40 British farmers have signed a letter to Conservative MPs criticising plans to scrap plans to pay them for their stewardship of nature.

The environmental land management scheme (Elms), a set of subsidies to replace the EU’s common agricultural policy, had been due to be rolled out this year. But last month, ministers placed it under review. A result is expected in the next week – within the seven days that Liz Truss has to remain as prime minister.

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A National Grid director sets out plan to reward homes and businesses for using energy outside of peak hours

• National Grid to pay households more to use off-peak power

This month we published our analysis of the British electricity system this winter. Our message is clear: in the base case our analysis indicates that supply margins are expected to be adequate, however this winter will undoubtedly be challenging. Therefore, all of us in the electricity system operator (ESO) are working round the clock to manage the system, ensure the flow of energy and do our bit to keep costs down for consumers.

One of the tools we have developed is the demand flexibility service. From November, this new capability will reward homes and businesses for shifting their electricity consumption at peak times. And we are working with the government, businesses and energy providers to encourage as high a level of take-up as possible. We are confident this innovative approach can provide at least 2 gigawatts of power – about a million homes’ worth.

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More than dozen activists in custody after protest at department store in London that also stopped traffic

Just Stop Oil protesters have sprayed orange paint on the front of Harrods in central London as they continue to call on the government to end all “new oil and gas”.

About 20 demonstrators gathered outside the department store in Knightsbridge at about 9am on Thursday for a 20th consecutive day of disruption to the capital.

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Heavy rain and rising waters continue to take a deadly toll in countries including Nigeria, Thailand and Vietnam

It has been a drenched 2022 for many parts of the world, at times catastrophically so. A year of disastrous flooding perhaps reached its nadir in Pakistan, where a third of the country was inundated by heavy rainfall from June, killing more than 1,000 people in what António Guterres, the UN secretary general, called an unprecedented natural disaster.

While floods are indeed natural phenomena, a longstanding result of storms, the human-induced climate crisis is amplifying their damage. Rising sea levels, driven by melting glaciers and the thermal expansion of water, are increasingly inundating coastal areas, while warmer temperatures are causing more moisture to accumulate in the atmosphere, which is then released as rain or snow.

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Catastrophic floods around the world are triggering warnings of unprecedented natural disaster – and the human-induced climate crisis is amplifying the damage.

Floods are natural phenomena, a result of storms, but the climate crisis is amplifying their damage. Rising sea levels, driven by melting glaciers and the thermal expansion of water, are increasingly inundating coastal areas, while warmer temperatures are causing more moisture to accumulate in the atmosphere, which is released as rain or snow.

Scientists have said flash floods are becoming a problem in some countries, with short, severe bursts of rain causing anything from inconvenience to mayhem

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EUAs extended their rangebound trading in light trading early on Thursday as traders eyed technical signals that suggest the market is likely to break out of its month-long range, while energy prices rose for the first time in seven sessions amid signs of lower temperatures approaching the region.

ARENA backs AGL study to test new "thermal storage" technologies that could be used to retrofit its ageing coal and gas turbines.

The post AGL to study thermal battery options to retrofit ageing fossil fuel turbines appeared first on RenewEconomy.

A leading carbon project developer has partnered with three technology specialists to provide analysis into its forestry projects at a time of increased scrutiny into the quality of REDD+ and ARR credits.

EU regulatory efforts to spur the decarbonisation of shipping need to be strengthened to avoid the use of LNG as a transitional lower emissions fuel for vessels, a shift which would not only undermine efforts to realise climate goals for the sector but also mitigate the region’s energy security objectives, a non-profit think-tank has warned.

Europe’s largest coal-fired power plant could replace most of its lignite generation with renewables paired with batteries or lower-carbon thermal capacity, according to a report from a clean energy research group, outlining a strategy that would lower the overall power system costs in the Polish region where it is located while maintaining energy security.

Governments and companies across the Asia-Pacific plan to rely heavily on CCS to reach net zero, with annual storage expected in the several hundred million tonnes of CO2 by the early 2030s, most of it via cross-border projects, but so far regulators have been quiet about who would be earning the potential carbon credits for the activities.

Cultivating organic produce may be backbreaking, but it’s the most important thing I’ve ever done

In July 2016, I was sitting on the rooftop of a building in central London, listening to the gentle rumble of a nearby beehive, when I realised that my life had changed entirely. I didn’t intend to quit – quitting crept up on me. After eight years of working in the media, I was on a path to becoming an organic food grower, with a temporary side hustle of city beekeeping.

Not long before that point, I was just like the people in the office building below me. My work days were spent behind a desk or lugging around camera equipment, but now I am devoted to a life of nurturing the soil and growing the plants that end up on our plates.

Claire Ratinon is an organic food grower and writer

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The hugely popular Fully Charged Live "festival of electrification" will debut in Australia early next year, with a Sydney show supported by The Driven and RenewEconomy.

The post Fully Charged “festival of electrification” to debut in Australia appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Vena Energy confirms it plans a 2GW offshore wind farm in Victoria's Gippsland region with turbines up to 21MW each.

The post Vena Energy confirms plan for 2GW offshore wind farm in Victoria appeared first on RenewEconomy.